Jackson Center, Ohio
In the center of things
Published October 2015
The fourth largest municipality in west-central Ohio’s Shelby County, Jackson Center continues to be a growing community with strong intentions of maintaining small-town traditions. Jackson Center is the only municipality in Shelby County to own its electric system.
The village was started on May 4, 1835, and incorporated on Nov. 7, 1894. Jackson Center has become home to several industries. Plastipak Packaging Inc., which produces plastic bottles, is the largest company in Jackson Center and employs 800 people. Airstream, known for its travel trailers, employs over 500 employees. Other companies that provide jobs in Jackson Center and surrounding communities include Rising Sun Express Trucking, Lacal Equipment Inc. and EMI Corp.
A village rich with history
In 1835 Jackson Center boasted several small businesses, including a dry goods store, a shoe shop, a blacksmith shop, a hotel known as the Carter House, Heinler Hardware, an ice cream parlor and a newspaper published by J.G. Sailor. These were soon joined by the First National Bank of Jackson Center.
Although Jackson Center was one of the last Shelby County settlements to be established, the village grew rapidly. During the 1930s, the village's water and electric utilities were installed. Today, Jackson Center has a population of nearly 1,500.
The village works closely with the Sidney/Shelby County Chamber of Commerce, the Shelby County Commissioners, the West Ohio Development Council, and the Ohio Department of Development to provide local and state business incentives.
Each year the village presents the Mayor’s Beautification Awards, which are peer nominated, to residents and business owners who help make Jackson Center a better place to live.
The village has convenient access to major roads, cities and outdoor recreation. It is within several miles of Interstate 75 and eight miles of U.S. 33. Just 10 miles northeast is the 5,800-acre multi-use Indian Lake State Park, and the cities of Wapakoneta and Sidney are both 15 miles away.
Balanced and diversified resource portfolio
As a member of AMP, Jackson Center participates in a number of AMP programs and projects that assist in providing reliable energy and other benefits to the community and its citizen-owners. These include:
- AMP Fremont Energy Center, a natural gas combined cycle facility that provides energy and capacity
- Business/Economic Development, AMP assistance which is designed to augment local economic development efforts
- Direct Connections, which assists municipal electric systems in organizing and/or enhancing and implementing a locally controlled key account, business retention and expansion program
- EcoSmart Choice, a green pricing program which enables members to extend the benefits of renewable generation to their customers regardless of the communities’ power supply mix
- Efficiency Smart, a comprehensive energy-efficiency program administered for AMP by the Vermont Energy Investment Corp.
- Meldahl/Greenup, which includes the run-of-the-river hydroelectric generating facility currently under construction at the Captain Anthony Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River and the existing generating facility at the Greenup Dam, also on the Ohio River
- Municipal Energy Services Agency (MESA), which provides member communities a source of technical assistance including planning, design and engineering, field services and training assistance
- Mutual Aid, a network of municipal electric systems that assist each other when utility emergencies occur that are too widespread to be handled by one system alone
- Natural Gas Aggregation, through its wholly owned subsidiary, AMPO, Inc., AMP provides natural gas aggregation services, which allow a group of consumers to combine their utility usage to form a buying group
- New York Power Authority (NYPA), providing hydroelectricity generated by the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers
- OMEGA JV 2, a joint venture that owns three gas turbine distributed generation units and 35 diesel units with a total capacity of 138.65 MW at sites across Ohio
- OMEGA JV 5, a joint venture that operates a 42-MW hydroelectric plant on the Ohio River and has back-up generation sources located throughout Ohio
- OSHA compliance, a contractual-based program that expands on the general safety program
- Phase 1 Hydro, which includes the run-of-the-river generating facilities currently under construction at the Cannelton, Smithland and Willow Island dams on the Ohio River
- The Prairie State Energy Campus, in southern Illinois, is a 1,600-MW state-of-the-art supercritical mine-mouth plant and adjacent coal mine
- Western AMP Service Group (WASG)
For more information, please visit www.jacksoncenter.com.